Wednesday, February 07, 2018

Yesterday there were hearings before the Senate Banking Committee with the chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on crypto currencies, distributed ledger technology (blockchain), and initial coin offerings.

If you do a quick browse of the subject through the news tab on Google (I used "bitcoin congress" as my search string), the theme you get from reading the headlines is "here come the regulators, Bitcoin is doomed," "regulators to seek more power over Bitcoin," basically several variations of, "they're about to shut it all down."

"In a hearing today before the Senate Banking Committee, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo opened up about what the near-term U.S. regulatory fate of cryptocurrency might look like. In a week of plunging prices and bad news, the hearing struck a tone that coin watchers could reasonably interpret as surprisingly optimistic...

...The testimony drew a useful distinction among three pillars of the virtual currency ecosystem (for lack of a better unifying term): cryptocurrencies, “a replacement for dollars;” ICOs, “like a stock offering;” and distributed ledger technologies, or the technical framework generally known as blockchain...

...All told, the hearing was far from apocalyptic for regulationphobes. While it’s clear that the CFTC and SEC have only scratched the surface of the kind of rule sets they’d like to put in place, their plans appeared to be overwhelmingly focused on protecting consumers from threats like rampant ICO “fraudsters” and unsafe exchanges rather than discouraging growth. For anyone interested in the long-term health and viability of virtual currencies, that should come as good news." -- T. Hatmaker

And this happened yesterday:

The two things I've highlighted on this chart may indicate that the Bitcoin market found its bottom. The top circle highlights a candle that resembles a "hammer," and the bottom circle highlights the corresponding spike in trade volume. These two things combined could indicate that a trend reversal is coming, as the combination suggests that bulls are getting back into the action and are gaining strength. Time will tell.

So all in all, yesterday was a pretty good day in the BTC market (which gave my Hashflare mining contracts performance a nice boost), despite the headlines, which consistently try to portray nearly everything as a negative when it comes to this stuff. It makes one wonder what the motivations are and who is working for whom...